


Wish You Were Here

by DevilDoll



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Community: cliche_bingo, Community: sga_flashfic, Dark, Gen, Loneliness, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-11
Updated: 2010-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-25 03:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevilDoll/pseuds/DevilDoll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He really, really hates bugs."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wish You Were Here

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to musesfool for the beta duties, as usual. *wxwx* Started for the sga_flashfic [Not Dead Yet challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/sga_flashfic/tag/challenge%3A%20not%20dead%20yet), finished for the “geographical isolation” square on my cliche_bingo card. You’re not supposed to use stories you’ve already started, but you’re also not supposed to still be working on your card a year later, so at this point, what’s another broken rule?

The bugs never miss a night, slithering through the grass just outside the flickering ring of firelight at the mouth of the cave, hissing at John when he moves. They scatter, screaming, when he fires Ronon's gun into the blackness. Even in the dark it's hard to miss, with so many of them out there.

He used to kill them more often, but he can't stand the sounds when the others fall on the wounded and tear them apart. In the morning, there's nothing left but a few shimmering pieces of wing fluttering in the stained grass, and two shiny mandibles the size of his hand, hard and black, viciously curved. He's grateful that he doesn't have to dispose of anything--he really, really hates bugs--but he just can't stand the sounds. Too wet, too crunchy.

So mostly he just leans against the wall of the cave and cradles the gun in his lap, huddled in Rodney's jacket as he tries to both get some rest and keep the fire going, because in the morning there will be more work to do. Wood for the fire. Food and water to keep him going a little longer. And always, always, rocks to haul.

Rodney's jacket --

 _"Where's Rodney?" John asked when he finally got the fire going and noticed he was gone. He wasn't worried then, just curious._

 _"He's taking a bathroom break," Ronon said; he thought it was an incredibly hilarious phrase, and used it all the time. He was pulling all the cushions out of the disabled jumper, tossing them on the ground near the fire so they could sit on them._

 _"By himself?" Rodney almost never went off alone on strange planets, no matter how beautiful and harmless they seemed._

 _"You wanted me to hold it for him?"_

 _"Good point."_

\--has a note in the pocket, scribbled equations that don't make any sense to John. He's folded and unfolded it so many times it's soft and ragged, the numbers a little smeared.

It wasn't meant for him--Rodney probably never even thought anyone else would see it. It's just a random note to himself, something he jotted down so he'd remember it later, but John's read it over and over, wondering what it means, and why Rodney wrote it down; he must have been somewhere without any computer access at all when it came to him.

Down in the corner, there's a single word, written in a different color ink. It says "socks." For some reason, that's John's favorite part.

* * *

  
He jerks awake, Rodney's note still clutched in his hand, when the fire gets too low and the things start creeping closer. Their legs make a dry scuffing sound, horrible mouths clicking--

 _clickclickclick_

 _Their guns came up instantly, flashlights burning holes in the forest, showing nothing but branches and leaves._

 _"Sounds like it's over there," Ronon said, pivoting smoothly, drawing a bead with his weapon, just as the sound came again from a completely different direction._

 _"Sounds like it's everywhere," John said. The trees were swaying, sounds of movement on all sides, and still that weird clickclickclick. Light bounced off something iridescent and shaped not quite right, and then more clicking, more clicking, dozens of them._

 _"We are outnumbered," Teyla said, just as calmly as she said everything, right before Ronon started shooting._

\---like the world's most horrifying chorus. John throws another armful of wood on the fire, making it blaze up, sparks flying. They hiss and retreat, wings rustling angrily, hard shells of their bodies clacking together.

The light from the fire is brighter now, and he can see the blood on the sleeve of his--Rodney's--jacket. A comma-shaped stain around a tear just above the elbow.

Ronon found it in the woods. Nothing else. Just the jacket, crumpled in a heap under a tree.

He brought it back to John and said--

 _"It's just a scratch." The bugs banged against the hatch, the windshield, the damaged drive pod as Ronon contorted himself so he could see the back of his own arm. "Probably from a tree."_

 _It didn't look like any scratch John had ever gotten from a wayward branch, but he passed the alcohol wipes and kept quiet._

 _Teyla woke him up near dawn to tell him Ronon was not well. He was pale, sweaty, incoherent. The scratch on his arm was a livid red, and it stank. She stayed with him while John went to look for Rodney again, and when John got back, Ronon was dead._

 _They buried him on a hill, covered the fresh dirt with the biggest rocks they could carry._

 _In the morning, the ground was gouged and scraped, some of the rocks moved, but Ronon was still there. They piled more rocks on top, and then some more._

\--"Someone's got him. We'll find him." They hadn't known, then.

He dozes again, and the bugs are gone by the time the first streaks of pink touch the sky, and John finally gets an hour or two of real sleep. The sun is his alarm clock, a warm yellow line that creeps across the mouth of the cave until it touches his face, and it's time to get up. No rest for the wicked, or the stranded.

Cold meat left from the night before is breakfast, with a little fruit salad on the side. His hands are torn and battered, smashed by rocks, torn by thorns, and the juice from the fruit stings.

Before he leaves the cave, he carefully gouges another mark into the wall--another night survived. It's laughably cliched, but he does it every day. There are dozens of marks now.

He wanders down to the beach and checks the mound of sticks and dry grass that'll be his signal fire if a ship ever comes through the gate. He pictures the gate sometimes, spinning above the planet, always empty, always dark.

"I'm pickin' up good vibrations…" he hums to himself, looking out at the ocean.

And it is a Beach Boys kind of place. The Vacation Planet they'd called it, because it was utterly beautiful, and completely deserted. Soft white sand, brilliantly blue water, hot but not too hot. A dense green jungle, and a cold waterfall, trees filled with fruit. Just a hint of a breeze--

 _"And no bugs," Rodney said. "I hate mosquitoes."_

John still thinks that's pretty funny.

The first thing he does is pick up all the rocks that got knocked around during the night. He carefully sorts them between the two piles. Some of them are familiar to him now. The one shaped like an arrow, the one with the deep black gouge.

He woke up one night in a panic because he couldn't remember which one was Ronon and which one was Teyla. The next morning, he broke the tip off a knife scratching Teyla's name on one of her rocks, but he has plenty of other knives, most of them Ronon's. Now he always knows which pile is which.

Rodney doesn't have a pile.

 _"I guess there are worse places we could get stranded," Rodney had said grudgingly._

 _"Wish I had my surfboard," John said, and Ronon nodded. He'd been eager to try surfing ever since John had showed him some pictures in a magazine._

 _"You know, we could rig up some kind of lock on the gate" Rodney said. "Turn this place into an inter-galactic vacation spot. We'd be rich." He looked up from the guts of the drive pod. "Might as well get something out of it, right?"_

He has to go further and further to get rocks now, and it takes a lot longer. He made a drag from the seats from the jumper, which makes it easier, but he can't move more than a few rocks at a time, even with the drag.

He piles them and piles them. One for Ronon, one for Teyla, one for Ronon, one for Teyla. When the piles get too high, he makes them wider, longer. He works until the sun is high in the sky, and then it's time for a swim. He strips and rinses his clothes first, careful not to put any more holes in them, and then washes up in one of the tide pools, shaking himself off and letting the sun dry him before he climbs back into his damp clothes.

After that it's time to look for food. He checks the nets, the traps, the fruit trees, and it's a good day. He won't have to work so hard tomorrow. Then comes the firewood. He has a pretty big stockpile in his cave, but sometimes it rains, and he needs dry wood to hold him over until he can get more.

Most of the time, though, the weather is perfect. They couldn't understand why--

 _"I've never heard of this place," Teyla said._

 _"Me, neither," Ronon said, squatting to pick up a handful of white sand, letting it run through his fingers._

 _"It seems odd that more people would not come here. It is very beautiful." Teyla smiled as she tipped her head to the sky. Behind her, Rodney lathered on sunscreen, smearing his face with streaks of white._

\--there was so little information about it in the Ancient database.

John's getting a little tired of the lack of labeling on really dangerous shit.

* * *

  
He gets back to the cave well before dusk, exhausted, hands bleeding again, and curls up with his head on Teyla's pack. It still smells like her a little, like her soap or her perfume, or maybe it's from the candles. He'd always meant to ask her where she got them.

They'd had two days here together, two days after they'd buried Ronon--

 _"I guess we know why no one comes here," John said as he packed another wad of gauze into the wound. Teyla's mouth was a tense line, knuckles white on her gun. "They'll be here soon, get you all patched up."_

 _"I am sure they will," Teyla said, and squeezed her eyes shut as he pushed down on the gauze._

\--and then she was gone, too.

Atlantis will come for him, he knows this. He isn't sure why they haven't yet; they should have been here by now. But they'll come, eventually. He just needs to survive long enough to get rescued. He can do it, if he's careful, if he doesn't get caught out in the open when the sun starts to go down.

His fire, banked during the day, is now mostly coals, which is perfect for drying the fish and game, so he spends some time getting that set up, munching on some fruit and a white tuber that tastes a little like carrots. Ronon said--

 _"Let's go."_

"Wait, wait," Rodney said. "There's another bush over there."

"I believe we have enough," Teyla said. They'd filled their packs with anything they recognized as edible, more than enough to last until either Rodney got the jumper fixed or Atlantis sent someone for them.

Rodney's cheeks--pink, despite his judicious application of sunscreen--were bulging with sticky purple berries. He made a sound of protest, reaching for more, but Ronon blocked him, herding him back toward the beach with his body.

"We should get back to the jumper," Ronon said. "Be dark soon."

\--he had to eat them all the time when he was a kid, and he couldn't stand the taste now.

After dinner, John pulls out a knife and one of the soft pieces of wood he's set aside. Whittling is for old men and hillbillies, and he assumes it can't be done properly without a porch, and a hound dog sleeping on your feet, but he's got time to kill.

He's no artist, despite the fuss his mother made over the crooked clay pots and lopsided wooden shelves he dutifully lugged home from school every year. He mainly makes things that aren't that far removed from the shape of a stick.

He's been working on a little surfboard. Surfing is on his mind a lot here. Kind of hard not to think about it, with the ocean right there all the time. Of course, back on Atlantis the ocean had been right there all the time, too, and he'd still never taken Ronon surfing.

He's almost done with it, scratching a design into the top--jagged flames and lopsided skulls, cool stuff Ronon would like. When he's done, he sets it on a little shelf in the wall of the cave, a gash in the rock that's deeper on one end than the other. He props it up next to his other finished, stick-like projects: a little puddlejumper, a lumpy ZPM, and a miniature set of Bantos rods.

This was supposed to be a quick trip, just a couple hours on a planet they didn't know much about, but thought maybe, after they'd spent a few minutes on it, they'd like to visit pretty often. It'd been the best day they'd had in a long time, until they tried--

 _"That's weird," Rodney said, as John tried his best to coax the jumper into the air. "Are you sure you didn't clip a tree or something on the way down? I'm reading structural damage..."_

\--to leave.

He's still waiting to leave.

He stokes the fire, curls up on the jumper cushions, and turns his face toward the wall. Outside, he hears the bugs creep toward the cave. _clickclickclick._

Sometimes, John thinks he might still find Rodney, or maybe Rodney will just wander out of the woods, limping and bitching and dirty after all this time, but alive.

And John will hand him his jacket and say, "Here, you dropped this," and Rodney will figure out a way off this godforsaken planet. This awful fucking planet that looks like a vacation paradise, and took his team from him, one at a time.

 _"And no bugs."_


End file.
